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About Dave Foster

I'm a worship leader and songwriter, and am associated with Shelter Vineyard Church of Concord and Church Without Shoes; a cross-denominational group in the Diablo Valley- "one church with many congregations."
My wife, Linda, and I have two married children 3 grandkids.

Hi friends. A few weeks ago, I had a Pet/CT scan to see if I was still cancer free. A lymph node near my trachea lit up as possibly being malignant. After having it scoped, it was confirmed that it’s a flare up of the esophageal cancer I had a couple of years ago. At this point, it’s limited to the one lymph node, but I will need to have chemo again to treat it. So, there are two good news items:

1. It’s very limited in size

2. It’s treatable.

The bad news is chemo is not a fun experience. I’ll be in treatment for about 4 months. I’d appreciate your prayers for healing. I do believe I’m still here telling you about this because God has answered a lot of healing prayers, along with the brilliant and compassionate work of the team at UCSF. I’m going to be using my music blog as a place to tell the story of the journey we’ve been through in the past four years. I’ll break it up into smaller posts and share some insights Linda and I have had along the way.

It’s Dave Foster. You might have already guessed that I’m the one who does the webmaster thing for the Concord Vineyard’s blog.

Something we encourage everyone to do during the summer is to take some time to reflect on scripture and try to hear what God is saying to us today through what we’re reading. It might just be a couple of minutes, but as we stick with the practice, I believe we’ll see the fruit of the effort.

So, in that spirit, I’m going to share my reflections with you. I read the Moravian Texts every morning. I have it sent to my inbox daily. I could pick some verses out on my own, but I’m finding that following the verses they’ve laid out for me has been very helpful to my knowing and using scripture in my life. It usually doesn’t take me any more than 15-20 minutes a day.

You can sign up for the daily email here They’ll only send you the daily verses, nothing else.
They send out 3 selections (in one email) every day, usually Old Testament, a Psalm and New Testament. Right now, I’m concentrating on the New Testament reading. So here’s today’s selection. I’ll share what I heard from it below.

Luke 9:12-27New International Version (NIV)

12 Late in the afternoon the Twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away so they can go to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging, because we are in a remote place here.”

13 He replied, “You give them something to eat.”

They answered, “We have only five loaves of bread and two fish—unless we go and buy food for all this crowd.”14 (About five thousand men were there.)

But he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.”15 The disciples did so, and everyone sat down.16 Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples to distribute to the people.17 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.

Peter Declares That Jesus Is the Messiah

18 Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?”

19 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.”

20 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.”

Jesus Predicts His Death

21 Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone.22 And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.25 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?26 Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

27 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”

Reflection:

So my reflection today is that there are no limits on the power and love of Jesus. There is no reason not to ask Him and have complete faith that it will be done. He fed 5,000 people in the middle of nowhere. He gave up His life for me. He rose from the dead.

Action/prayer:

Today, Lord, I want to make sure that I’m looking for opportunities to act in faith. When someone tells me of an area they need God’s help, I want to pray for them and see that help come. Especially when it comes to emotional, mental or physical healing.

Last night, at the Church Without Shoes Maundy Thursday Communion Service, several people asked me about the song we played at the end. It’s called Fiery Love, and is available on my album “Greater Things.” It was written by Samuel Lane and Daniel Wheeldon. The album was produced by Marc Ford and Chris Lizotte

As I was singing the song, I found my mind drifting to memories of the journey of life since the album was recorded. First, I was in the moment, thankful for my great friends in the band last night. We’re all worship leaders from churches in the area, and we’ve shared the highs and lows of our lives together over the last 10+ years. Some have moved away and others have joined in more recently. When we come together to lead worship, it’s amazing how we share the same heart and purpose.

Next, I was thinking of the journey my family has been on. We finished recording the album in August 2014. In mid-September, I was diagnosed with stage 3 melanoma. Over the next few months I had two major surgeries to remove cancer cells, which had travelled into my lymph nodes. Through the work of God’s healing and the incredible doctors and staff at UCSF Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco, I am now cancer free! As I sang, I thought about our journey, and the journey many of my friends have had with cancer.

Third, I was thinking about my dad. While I was laid up after my second surgery, my dad took a fall in his back yard and ruptured his spleen. He was hospitalized for two months before passing away on March 27, 2015. The first anniversary of his passing is Easter Sunday. I was wondering about how I was going to react to Easter this year.

Finally, there’s this high note I hit the end of the song. I hit it and hold it for a couple of measures. I’m not doing it to show off, it’s reflective of the power, relief, strength and faith I sense in still being here. I have visited the valley of the shadow of death and God has delivered me. I’m still here to be a husband, father, grandfather, friend and leader.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been missing from the blog world, because I’ve been devoting quite a bit of time to running a Kickstarter campaign for my new album project. It took up a lot of my attention, but it was worth it! Not just because it funded successfully, but also because I learned some things about myself and the family I have around me.

By nature, I’m an introvert who likes to be liked. I love being around people, but I’m probably going to be pretty quiet while more gregarious people carry the conversation. I’m careful of the words I choose, and have a very hard time speaking off the cuff. All in all, I’d rather write, and be able to get my thoughts down more thoughtfully.

Before taking this challenge on, I had to know that God was behind the idea. For me, “what is God saying to me and what am I going to do about it?” are the starting points. Because without knowing it is first in God’s mind, the hurdles would be insurmountable. I knew this was God’s prompt. And this had been confirmed by those closest to me and my community of believers.

There were a couple of hurdles to jump on the way to putting my project on Kickstarter. The first one was feeling okay about asking people to join in as backers. This was a big hurdle for me. It felt embarrassing to ask people to support my project with their money. I would rather have the money miraculously drop from heaven. But I knew too, that having the support and backing of others would fuel the confidence I needed to approach the project. And I knew this was a new frontier in humility for me. Since God had said to go for it, this was part of my growth.

This is where investment in the Five Capitals really renovated my thinking. The capitals are, in ascending order of importance; financial, intellectual, physical, relational and spiritual. The more my wife and I prayed about the project, and the more people encouraged us on, I realized there was a great deal of relational and spiritual capital laid up for me in this geographic place where I’ve lived and worked for all these years. People really wanted to help out! They were actually excited to join with me in this project. They weren’t annoyed that I was asking for their help, because they could see the Kingdom investment they were making. I received so many encouraging emails and messages from so many people, it gave me a stronger resolve to go confidently into what God had shown me to do. I can’t tell you how much this meant to me. To have people put into words their support and share ways I had had input into their lives was both humbling and a huge blessing.

This came in handy as the campaign got off to a very slow start. But being sure this was God’s leading, I knew I was to forge ahead. I wasn’t guaranteed the success of the campaign, but I knew God was in the process. And in that I could be at peace.

The campaign was set for 25 days, and if you know how this kind of thing works, it has a deadline. And either you reach goal and receive the funding, or you don’t reach your goal and you receive nothing. It’s an all or nothing situation. So after 11 days, I had only 6%, then……

One of the most encouraging comments came from a fellow pastor and good friend who I respect in our area. He said that I had no idea of the relational and spiritual capital I had built up over the years. That hit me hard and I knew it was true. What I discovered through this Kickstarter process is that years of following Christ, walking faithfully, loving others, and investing in the worship life in our valley had produced equity that I could draw from. There was an exponential return.

By day 22 the project was fully funded and went on to exceed the goal. And I am looking forward to sharing the lyrics and music that God’s put in me to share. There is more work ahead to see this project through to completion. But I am looking forward to the process.